Strong Bodies, Strong Business: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building a Sustainable Business Through Weightlifting

By Janet Majure

Build a satisfying business and improve your clients’ lives when you teach them barbell weightlifting in a small class setting. Strong Bodies, Strong Business shows you how to target clients interested in getting and staying strong, a major goal for the often-overlooked clients over age 45.

If you are a weightlifter, a perso

• Language: English
• Publisher: Breadbasket Publishing Company
• Release date: Nov 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9780965669535

Janet Majure

Janet Majure is the owner and coach at Give Me Strength, a small, private gym that teaches weightlifting for better living and that has grown steadily since it began in 2012. Janet also is a longtime author and freelance editor. Find her and her business online at http://givemestrength.net and http://janetmajure.com.

Book preview

Introduction

If you are a weightlifter, a personal trainer, a sports coach, or perhaps a group exercise instructor—whether for spinning, aerobic dance, yoga, or other activity—you probably should be teaching weightlifting. Really. And if you like the idea of running your clients’ workouts the way you prefer and relating to your clients in a meaningful way, then you might think about starting your own business as a weightlifting coach. This book shows you how.

Teaching weightlifting to mostly middle-aged people, mostly women, is what I’ve been doing the last six and a half years, and clients continually reward me with comments telling about their most recent successes outside the weight room that they attribute to weightlifting. In my many years of employment, I’ve never done anything as satisfying. It feels great to know you are helping people in a concrete way, and it’s even nicer when they tell you—and they do!

In fact, I’d go so far as to declare that by focusing on a demographic often overlooked in the fitness industry—people, especially women, older than 45—you can build a thriving and personally rewarding business, too. With that demographic, you get a clientele that makes remarkable, life-changing gains—and is grateful for it. And, unlike the highly mobile, younger demographic, they keep coming back. Don’t believe me? Consider the comments my clients offered when I put up my website a few years ago:

I have taken weightlifting classes and used machines at a gym, but following Janet’s systematic approach is the first time I have had measurable results in terms of strength. Plus, I have maintained my bone density without medication, and I feel and look better. —Angela, age 65

I realized my grandkids weren’t as heavy as I thought they were months before. It became less of a big deal to put something heavy way up on the top shelf. My knees didn’t kill me anymore when in one position for too long. I could squat down and play with the kids … be the catcher for the impromptu family baseball games. My bike rides became real bike rides again. I felt like I could climb a mountain with all this newfound strength. —Pam, age 45

Since starting weightlifting 18 months ago, not only have I gotten stronger (I no longer need help carrying my dog’s 40-pound bag of food to the car!), but my balance and stamina have improved. —Linda, age 54

I love my weightlifting class! I was apprehensive, because in the past I’ve hated those weights-aerobics classes. This is a completely different experience! I can feel my newfound strength regularly in everyday life. Plus, it’s a great way to blow off steam! I recommend it to everyone I meet wanting to improve their fitness! —Susan, 27

I always feel my workout is tailored to my abilities. I appreciate Janet’s observations and advice. Instead of just not going downhill, I am getting stronger. It is also a fun group to work with. —Michael, 67

Comments such as these are typical of the kind of remarks I hear week in and week out. Wouldn’t you like that?

I don’t exclude younger people from my classes. The 20- and 30-year-olds in my classes are outnumbered, but their comments are rewarding, too, both because it’s nice to hear their enthusiasm about weightlifting, and because they say they are inspired and motivated by the strength of their older classmates. Esprit de corps develops, too, and on days when workouts are particularly heavy, my clients cheer each other on.

I understand how they feel, having experienced remarkable strength gains since I started weightlifting. And I am right there with you if want a rewarding career coaching weightlifting.

My story

I never expected I’d be a weightlifting coach. When I started weightlifting, it was with one goal in mind: to build my weakened bones without resorting to drugs. Little did I imagine that seven years later, I would start my own business teaching weightlifting; it wasn’t an obvious career move for someone with decades of experience as a writer and editor. But teaching and coaching weightlifting is now my primary occupation, and it’s been enormously satisfying as well as financially worthwhile.

I was 51 years old when I started lifting, freshly recovered from a compression fracture of a lumbar vertebra (after an embarrassing fall off an electric scooter). Before the fracture, I was reasonably active. I walked at least two miles a day, seven days a week. I lived in a house with stairs I traversed many times a day. I did my own cleaning and gardening and snow-shoveling. I didn’t go to a gym, but I tried to incorporate physical activity regularly into my everyday life.

My first day at weightlifting shocked me into the reality of just how much strength I’d lost over the years. I couldn’t do a single bodyweight squat. I could maybe get to about a 45-degree knee bend without feeling unsteady. Because of the previous fracture, I was terrified of trying a Romanian deadlift, although I know it was very light. The only gratifying aspect of that first day was that the coach told me I did well on the power clean intro. A day and a half later, I was unbelievably sore. My quadriceps screamed. And that was from working out with a broomstick! And my abdominals! Oof!

Despite that horrifying start, I stuck with it. For at least the first month, I spent the entire workout dreading the core work at the end of the session. After a couple of months, I concluded that I needed to resign myself to being sore at least a couple of days a week as long as I continued to lift.

But I got stronger. (Surprise!) One day I simply stood up from a chair and realized I was stronger. Standing up doesn’t sound like much, but without realizing it, I’d started to develop the habits of feeble people—such as using my hands to help me stand up from a chair or using a little rocking momentum to get out of the car. Now I didn’t need those habits. That’s big! A vanity reinforcement occurred about that time, too. That was the night when I turned onto my side in bed, laid my hand on my thigh, and discovered that my thigh had become nice and solid.

And all that was within the first six months or so. As I continued to lift, I continued to get stronger. (So did my bones.) As is common, I plateaued relatively early on my bench presses and bent-over rows, but for years I kept making gains in my squats, Romanian deadlifts, and power cleans. A major highlight was squatting 60 kg—for reps! my body weight!—around the time of my 60th birthday. It was a great feeling! And I’ve added to that in the three years since.

Changing roles

About the sixth year of my lifting, my coach, Loren McVey, announced that he was planning a multiyear, phased retirement. His plan was to decline new clients and reduce the number of classes as attrition cut into his base. His announcement happened to correspond with an accumulation of changes for me and the publishing industry.

The short version is: my backside was really tired of being sat upon for 40 or so hours a week, and the publishing industry’s ongoing turmoil was making my freelance writing and editing work a less reliable source of income. I was ready for a change and ready to get out of my chair.

But what could I do that didn’t involve much sitting? When I thought about things that I enjoyed doing and was reasonably proficient at, weightlifting rose to the top. And with Loren looking toward retirement, I knew there would be people wanting the program he offered. I spoke to him about it, and with his encouragement and advice, I took the USA Weightlifting Level 1 coach training and began putting the pieces of a business together: location, equipment, marketing. I’d put a business together before (a weekly newspaper) and previously I’d been a newspaper reporter writing about small business, so I had some idea of how to proceed.

Give Me Strength was born. The business was a good move for me, and it’s been good for my clients. I started with three classes and many openings and now, six years later, I have seven classes and a waiting list, plus another coach is leading two classes in my space. This book lays out the process that got us here and the weightlifting program I use, which is pretty much Loren’s program.

Why it can work for you

One thing I have come to understand over the years is just how rare this mode of exercise is in the public marketplace, especially for women and older adults. Most big gyms offer weight rooms with a full range of dumbbells and some have barbells, but you probably have to have a personal trainer to learn how to use them, and many if not most people can’t afford one-on-one personal training.

The classes most gyms offer rarely give good, close instruction on lifting technique, or they don’t go heavy. Many people either don’t stick with lifting classes or wind up on machines. Machines have their place, but they’re boring and don’t provide functional strength the way weightlifting does.

Meanwhile, CrossFit has brought weightlifting to the attention of a wider audience, but many people are intimidated or simply uninterested in what one devotee called a punishingly exhausting sweatfest.¹ And while some 60-year-olds may enjoy CrossFit, I’d venture that it’s not for most of them. It’s also not for lots of other people.

What’s left for someone wanting to get strong? Small-class weightlifting workouts taught by you, me, and anyone else who appreciates weightlifting and is eager to share its benefits. Although physical limitations can rule out weightlifting for a few people, most can do it, perhaps with some accommodations. That’s one of the great things about weightlifting: it can be adapted to a huge range of limitations.

So how about it? Are you ready to give weightlifting and its strength-building exercises a try? Ready to start your own business or expand your existing one? Then read on. There’s a whole market out there waiting for you.

Chapter 1: Your Prospective Clients Need You

Countless times, clients have asked me, "Do you know anybody who does something like this in [city